Optimize Your Life!

This exciting book is a hands-on, principle-centered approach to success. Complete the worksheets, pay the price, and you will make a significant difference in your life and in the world.
Dr. Stephen R. Covey author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness.

Optimize Your Life! synergistically merges personal and organizational Strategic Planning. This book provides step-by-step text and user-friendly worksheets for addressing the major questions of one’s life, starting with:

Who am I?
What am I doing now?
What do I value?
What am I good at?
What are my passions?
What is a “successful” life to me?
What are the “toxic” forces in my life?
What do I want to have/do/be in my life?
What is my risk tolerance?
What do I need to do to “clean up” my life?

These questions lead to other questions, answered so as to produce a personal inventory as well as Mission, Vision, and Values Statements and Goals. The unique concept is the reduction of each Goal into component Projects and then into a series of Tasks, each one of which is assigned a One-page Strategic Planner for its completion.

Dr. Dahl wrote the book I wish I had written! Read it; use it; and don't loan it out (because you won't get it back). This book will make the process easier and more productive for you than any book of its type that I know (including my own).
George Morrisey, author of Creating Your Future: Personal Strategic Planning for Professionals and the Morrisey on Planning series.

The author, Bernhoff Allen Dahl, M.D. is a physician, entrepreneur, speaker, and consultant who has successfully applied the power of Strategic Planning during twenty-five years of “in the trenches” medical group practice and a range of business ventures and consulting. He developed the One-page concept in 1981 and has successfully adapted it to both organizational and personal use.

Optimize Your Life! is a self-development system that features a program for readers to define, improve, and accept themselves, and to apply to their organizations.

“Everyone needs to be strategic. My friend, Dr. Bernie, makes it easy to understand and do---instantly.”
Mark Victor Hansen, co-author of Chicken Soup for the Soul series.

I was born and raised in northern New Jersey, the son of Norwegian immigrants. Since my father was self-employed in manufacturing and real estate, I enjoyed a good, albeit hectic, life. I was a hyperkinetic kid and a good student with too many interests and projects. In my efforts to gain some control and focus over these many projects, I discovered the power of color-coded file folders. I graduated to three ring notebooks. For me, life had followed an orderly and efficient series of phases. I was raised in a conservative, fundamentalist Baptist church, and then went on to Wheaton College in Illinois (Reverend Billy Graham’s alma mater) where I earned degrees in Chemistry and Bible. Next I went to Cornell University Medical College for my M.D. and completed my internship and Pathology residency at the University of Vermont. In 1971, after two years as an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer with the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, I was named the Chief of Pathology at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, Maine. As a result of my early life and religious upbringing, as well as my formal education as a chemist, an epidemiologist, and a physician/pathologist, my world view was as wide as possible. My interests and knowledge ranged from chemical elements and tissue cells to celestial beings (aka God), from disease processes in individuals to health concerns of large populations. However, since my four years at Cornell included a great deal of training in psychiatry, my religious concepts were tested and molded. I was comfortable in the world of the abstract, unseen, untested, and unproven. In Maine, I co-founded Dahl-Chase Pathology Associates which served eighteen hospitals and three reference labs in the state. During the next twenty-five years of “in the trenches” medical group practice, I learned a great deal. I was forced to ad- dress the complex nature of people, especially myself, as we struggled to succeed. These experiences led me to the study, understanding, and application of the benefits of the dynamic management tool, strategic planning. I have applied strategic planning to countless management venues, both inside and outside the practice of medicine, as an owner, co-owner, and consultant. In 1995, I retired from the full-time practice of pathology and founded PathQuest, Inc., a management consultancy. I have offered lectures, seminars, and consultation services on leadership issues and skills with a focus on strategic planning.